RHODE ISLAND POLITICS 



E 664 AND JOURNALISM. 

.ne D2 

Copy 1 , . __ 



A^ LETTER, 

FROM 

THOMAS DAVIS 

TO 

HON. HEJMRY B. AWTHOINY, 

U. S. SENATOR. 



** No, they cannot touch me for Coining ; 
I am the King himself." — Lear. 



OLLEC-^^-- 



PROVIDENCE: 

A. CRAWFORD GREINE, PRINTER, 43 CANAL STREET. 
1866. 



RHODE ISLAND POLITICS, 

AND JOURNALISM. 



I A. LETT 



FROM 



THOMAS DAVIS 

TO 

• HON. HENRY B. ANTHONY, 

TJ. S. SENATOR. 

*' No, they cannot touch me for Coining ; 
I am the King himself." — Lear. 



PROVIDENCE: 

A. CRAWFORD GREENE, PRINTER, 43 CANAL STREET. 
1866. 






Gift. 
iU»20 »«"♦* 



4» 



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Hon. Henry B. Anthony, 

Sir : 

I offer no special apology for jiddressing you at this time. 

The relation existing between us gives me a right to choose 
my own time, or any time that may suit my purpose and not 
be ofTensive to good taste, or inconsistent with a proper regard 
foi" public opinion. 

To you, Senator Anthony, I owe nothing politically. I have 
received nought but wrong and injustice at your hands. I say 
on my part, unprovoked and unmerited ; unless it be a provo- 
cation to defend one's character as a public man, against im- 
putations which if verified, ought to consign me to more than 
political obscurity. I have rested for some years under accu- 
sations and imputations foul and false, cast upon me by you 
during the canvas of 1859. Guiltless I was of what you then 
'iharged me with : nay, to the extent of my ability I made an 
vjjirnest effort to hold prominently before the public intellect 
ind conscience the principles arulassuesi^Qf the National Re- 
publican Party and to preserve in the State, its organization 
intact. I was the candidate for Congress of the National Re- 
publican party, receiving the nomination only as I have re- 
ceived all the nominations that were ever tendered to me, 
without intrigue or solicitation. I was by every consideration 
of justice ynd honor and sound party policy entitled to your 
support and the hospitality of the Providence Journal, then 
supposed to be the organ of the Republican Party. 

And now, after a lapse of five years, you renew and reiter- 
ate those charges with a confidence which might lead those 
who do not know you to suppose that you believe what you 
assert in your Organ with so much flippancy and assurance. 

You concede to me the quality of frankness; and I am 
aware of exercising, on one occasion, a plainness of speech 
wdiich was in some measure due to your personal presence. I 
refer to the' remarks made by me, on the politics and Journal- 
ism of the State, and your connection with them, in the Oon- 
ven!ion assembled in the State House, on the 22d of Septem- 



ber, 1SG4, for the purpose of nominating Presidential electors. 
On that occasion two sets of deleg'ates presented themselves 
from the city of Providence, one of which had been called into 
existence solely for the purpose of electing to the Senate of the 
United States the editor of the Providence Journal. 

Whoever reads your comments on the remarks made by me 
at the Convention cannot fail to discover that all reserve wa3 
thrown aside. Your article is not criticism but vituperation ; 
a philipic which, fo.r reckless assertion, has no parallel in the 
Journalism of this State in our day. I was not unprepared 
for every kind of accusation that a detected and exposed offen- 
der could utter or invent. I was not unmindful 

" Tluit he wlio stands upon a slippery place 
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up." 

You charge me in your Organ with nearly every species of 
political depravity. You do it as a matter of necessity to con- 
ceal your own baseness and treachery. J am the object of 
your peculiar arsd pointed malignity because I have dared to 
maintain, in defiance of your influence and authority, the in- 
teirrity of the party to which we both professed to belong, and 
wliich, with an utter disregard of all the rules that govern hon- 
orable partisans, you have set at naught whenever your per- 
sonal ambition or interest could thereby be served. 

Your whole political history is stained with intrigue and du- 
plicity. You have employed the most unscrupulous means and 
agents in your service, and by long training they have become 
experts in the degraded political school of which you now stand 
in this community, the acknowledged head and leader ; and 
your last election, if in any proper sense it can be called an 
election, to the Senate of the United States, will be long re- 
membered as an embodiment of the worst elements that ever, 
in our State, entered into a political contest — a contest grow- 
ing out of your inordinate self-conceit that you were the only 
man par excellence in Rhode Island qualified to fill the place 
of United States Senator. 

Your wholesale accusation and denunciation of me, in your 
article of Sept. 23, 1864, commences as follows : 

" To say that Mr. Davis made an extraordinary exhibition of himself in the 
electoral convention would not be strictly true. Doubtless, it would have been 
an extraordinary exhibition in almost any body else ; but with due allowance 
jor the circct of disappointed ambition and of recent defeat, upon a temper not 



over sweet by nature, we cease to feel much surprise that he should bring hia 
petty personal griefs to the notice of the convention, and detain the assembled 
representatives of the party with a recital of the reasons why the people of 
North Providence would not send himto the General Assembly." 

Your article is an attack on my private character, and rep- 
resents me as a man whose disappoinfcd ambition, acting on a 
soured temper, had led to an exhibition discreditable to ray 
standing and character, or would have been so to any other 
man. 

I can inform you once for all, that you arrd I see things 
with very different eyes. I have seldom performed a public 
duty that gave me greater, I may say profounder satisfaction. 
Somebody was bound to arraign the greatest political offender 
in the State, and that duty devolved on me. I met you face 
to face in the plenitude of your power ; and I can assure you 
I was glad beyond expression to have such an opportunity. — 
You should have kept your disorganizing delegation out of the 
Convention, and they, or rather their representative successors 
would have been spared the disgrace of expulsion from the 
State Convention in 1865. 

But I have made the above extract more particularly for the 
purpose of referring to that part of it in which you say I " de- 
tained the Convention with a recital of the reasons why the 
people of North Providence would not send me to the General 
Assembly," 

I think you can hardly be conscious of the estimate placed 
on you since that election. It would be difficult, by any single 
act, to sink a public reputation from respectability to contempt, 
more certainly than was done by you, in your conduct towards 
your old and devoted friends — the Union electors of North 
Providence. 

On the occasion of their primary meeting for the choice of 
delegates to attend the State convention, they found thsmselves, 
in their own regularly called caucus, confronted by numbers 
sufficient to have outvoted them, introduced or carried there by 
your political partisans. All that were outside the Democrat- 
ic party would not have exceeded a dozen *' conservative gen- 
tlemen. " 

The prominent and most efficient leaders in this raid on or- 
der and decency, were persons holding appointments under the 
Federal Government — positions conferred on them through 
your influence as a Senator in Congress. Finding themselves 



G 

thus outiiumbered, the union electors withdrew to another hall 
and there made a choice of delegates. As a consequence, 
two sets of delegates presented themselves at the State con- 
vention to represent the town of North Providence. After an 
earnest and searching discussion, your " conservative " dele- 
gates were rejected. But this defeat, as the sequel will show, 
did not end the game on your part. You had determined to 
be re-elected United States Senator cost what it might of hon- 
or or character. 

You treated with contempt the decisions of the State con- 
vention, denounced its action, and moved on to the execution 
of your plans. That this matter may be perfectly understood, 
I copy from your organ, the Providence Journal of J\Iarch 30th, 
and of April 5th, 18G4, the two tickets for Representatives 
to the General Assembly nominated by the respective par- 
ties. 

I will give your successful ticket the first place. 

" The Union National ami Democratic Caucus, last evening, adopted the follow- 
ing nominations for the General Assembly : — " 
For Senator, Lewis Fairbrother. 
" 1st llepresentative, L. M. E. Stone, 
" 2d " Albert \V. Carpenter, Dem. 

" 3d » Herbert E. Dodge, Dem. 

" 4th " Jesse .Metcalf, 

" 5th " Ralph P. Devereaux, Dem. 

" A Caucus of Union National electors was held at the Town Hall at 2 o'clock, 
yesterday afternoon, after a few hours notice by hand-bill." 
For Senator, William Grosvenor. 
'• 1st Representative, William M. Bailey, 
" 2d '• James Davis, 

" 3d " Hiram II. Thomas, 

" 4th " Gideon L. Spencer, 

" 5th " Thomas Davis, 

.fames C. Collins having declined a re-election." 

This last ticket, defeated by your treacherous conduct, re- 
ceived the vote of nearly every earnest Union National elec- 
tor in the town of North Providence. It is safe to say, that 
not fifty men who had ever supported the Republican ticket 
cast their votes wath the successful party. All the rest were 
Democrats or mercenaries, purchased by you and your reve- 
nue friends. 

The ticket nominated by the Union National party was the 
same as the year preceding, with the single exception that my 
own name was added to the list, to fill the vacancy made by 
the resignation of Mr. Collins, who had been chosen State Au- 



ditor ; and certainly, before yoa made your raid on the prima- 
ry meeting, there were men on the ticket who were your 
political friends, and who, if elected, would have S'ip{)orted 
you for the LFnited States Senate in preference to any other 
candidate ; and there was not a man on the ticket who would 
not have abided by the decisions of the majority, in any party 
caucus of the members of the Assembly. But this was not 
enough. You wanted, Macbeth like, to " make assurance 
doubly sure," and, in violation of all the rules that have hith- 
erto bound and held honorable men together as members of a 
political society, you proceeded to execute your plans. 

There was another feature in the contest in North Provi- 
dence worthy of special notice. The most active and efficient 
supporters of your party were men holding oflice under the 
Federal Government, and commissioned by Abraham Lincoln ; 
and, at your instigation and for your benefit, they directed all 
their energies to defeat the ticket on which were six earnest, 
loyal and regularly nominated friends and supporters of the 
administration of Abraham Lincoln, and to elect the ticket on 
wdiich three of the nominees were earnest in their support of 
the Democratic party, and who did, when the time arrived, 
cast their, votes for George B. McCIellan. 

You speak as if you fancied yourself wronged and injured, 
and that there was no just cause for opposing your carreer. I 
quote from your organ of Sept. 29th, 1864. " The unpleas- 
ant controversy in which we find ourselves engaged with men 
professing the same political opinions has been forced upon us 
unwillingly and after unexampled fovbearance. " 

You entert;ain very strange notions of " forbearance. " 
Your hand was raised against every man, nnd you struck down 
their most sacred rights. When you came into North Provi- 
dence and packed the primary meeting of the Union National 
party, and elected to the General Assembly, Democrats, was 
this an instance of your " forbearance ? " When' you caused 
the same thing to be done in Newport, was that another instance 
of " forbearance V When you induced a portion of the City 
Committee of Providence to " bolt and secede," and issue that 
immortal manifesto, was that again an instance of your "unex- 
ampled forbearance? " 

Your whole proceedings may seem to you perfectly right 
and justifiable. Your reasoning and your conduct imply that 
you have reached that mental condition which makes you sup- 



8 

pose that every thing in the State connected with its politics is 
to bend to your official or private advantage. The officers who 
obtain their appointment from the General Government, in case 
of a senatorial election, are required to conform their conduct 
to your demands ; or if they witness the most gro:5s and palpa- 
ble outrages on the rights of the electors, and take no part in 
resisting Ihem, they may escape proscription and removal ; 
but active opposition to your demoralizing and disorganizing 
schemes is an offence not to be forgotten or overlooked. Few 
of your fellow citizens doubt that Mr. Chickering could have 
retained his place as Postmaster of Pawtucket, if he had aided 
in the base work performed for your special benefit by other 
Government officials in North Providence. 

In other times, when the Democratic party was in the as- 
cendant, there was loud, long and strong railing at them by 
you in your Organ, for allowing the office-holders to be active 
in support of the measures or candidates of the party to which 
they belonged. Under the new dispensation established by 
your supremacy, the first requisite is personal homage and 
devotion to the Senatorial will. 

Your whole argument against me proceeds on the assump- 
tion that there was no such thing in Rhode Island as a Repub- 
lican party in 1859. If you can establish that position, I shall 
find no difficulty in showing you as the active, malignant and 
treacherous foe, whose envenomed stiletto gave it the fatal 
stab. Take which horn of the dilemma you please ; if it was 
dead — you killed it ; if buried — you dug its grave and pre- 
sided at its obsequies. 

You were pronounced Republican and elected United States 
Senator by the Legislature of 1858 ; and yet in 1859 we have 
no Republican Parly ! not even to elect members to the Na- 
tional Congress ! In all the other Free States such a party 
existed, but in Rhode Island it had been extinguished by the 
fiat of the Providence Journal and its Republican Senatorial 
editor. Let us proceed to examine the record : 

It is undeniable that the Providence Journal was the organ 
of the Republican Party, and that its editor accepted the 
principles and adopted the platform of the convention that met 
at Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, and which nominated John 
C. Fremont and William L. Dayton for President and Vice- 
President of the United States, and invited the co-operation ol 
their fellow citizens in the following language : — 



9 

" This convention of delegatss, in piirsuance of a call addressed to the people 
of the United States loithoitt regard to past political differences and divisions, 
who are opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; to the policy of 
the present administration ; to the extension of slavery to free territory ; in 
favor of the admission of Kam-.as as a free State ; of restoring; the action of the 
Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson — " 

A Platform was framed in accordance with the above dec- 
laration of Principles. 

You, Senator Anthony, called yourself a Republican when 
Mr. Durfee was chosen in 1857 to the Congress of the United 
States, and Thomas G. Turner, known since as Gov. Turner, 
Avas the candidate of the Republicans, and received the sup- 
port of the Providence Journal, in opposition to Mr. Saunders, 
the candidate of the AirTerican Republicans ; the rest of the 
ticket for General officers being identical ; so that the election 
in April, 1857, closed without any pretense that the party had 
changed its n;'.me or adopted a new Platform. 

I will now proceed to show who the disorganizer of the Re- 
publican Party was, and the method by which it was accom- 
plished. I shall rely on evidence furnished by yourself to sus- 
tain me in ra;iking out the charges, and shall quote from the 
columns of the Providence journal, your own exclusive organ. 

Whoever reads the Journal of June 20th, 1859, may learn 
how easy a matter it is in Rhode Island to disorganize, secede 
from, and break up a National Party. Thus it runs : — 

" So the State Convention was called, headed " Republican." Some of the 
Americans objected, that, as they furniselid a full share of the voters, their dis- 
tinctive name ou^ht to be preserved in the official call. The members of the 
General Assembly recommended that thei/ shoidd be g rat ijied ; the State Com- 
mittee met and readilj^ assented ; it could do no harm and might save some 
votes, and it was only retaining a name already adopted. It has been alleged 
that the Committee had no authority for this. True, but the Committee might 
we/Z assM??ie the authority under the general power of cJling the Convention. 
Whether it might or might not, it is quite certain the people endorsed the course 
by their votes." 

) 

Here it is fully admitted that the National Republican Par- 
ty w^as disorganized ; and such paltry reasons are given as only 
an apostate politician of unscrupulous character would venture 
to disclose. 

You assert that "the State Committee met and readily as- 
sented." The facts are these ; — nine of a Committee of 
fifteen, hastily called together, and five of these nine present, 
under the skilful management of the recently elected United 
States Senator, voted to assume the authority ; or, in other 



10 

words, five out of a Committee consisting of fifteen, confirmed 
the treachery which you had planned. On calling the whole 
Committee together, it was fcund t\v<d a majority was opposed 
to the assumption of such powers ; and the Republican State 
Committee called a convention, which assembled March 17, 
1858, and passed the following resolutions and elected a State 
Committee whose names are worth holding in remembrance. 

Resolved, That this Convention approve of the principles and policy embod- 
ied in tlie resolves of the Pbiladelpliia Codvention of .June 17th, 1856, and re- 
anirnicd in the declaration of the Ilepublicau Congressional Caucus of Decem- 
ber 17th, 1857. 

Resolved, That wc invite the co-operation of all friends of freedom and the 
right of self-government, of wliatever political party, in a united effort for the 
overthrow of an adminislration, and a pa/ty subjected to the rule, and pleged 
to the sidfish policy of the slaveholdtng oligarchy. 

Resolved, That the State Committee be authorized to issue the next call foi* 
a State Convention in conformity herewith. 

R. R. CARR, 1 

R. R. HAZARD, Je., I ,, 

J T. HOPKINS. >JVewport County. 

JEiHRO PECKHAM, J 

THOMAS DAVIS, ^ 

STEPHEN BENEDICT, | 

EDWARD HARRIS, i ProvidencR County. 

C. A. SLOCUM. I 

WILLIAM M. CHACE, J 

BYRON DIMAN, ? p • , , ^ , 

H. H. LUTHER; 5 -^'"'"^ County. 

ROWLAND G. HAZARD, } 

HORACE BABCOCK, > Washington County. 

SYLVESTER ROBINSON, S 

NICHOLAS BROWN, } zr , r. . 
C. D. KENYON, } ^'"' County. 

State Republican Committee. 

This State committee so chosen called the conventions, State 
and District, which assembled Feb. IG, 1859, and nominated 
candidates for State and National offices. The convention was 
a.n earnest and most substantial body, the members of which, 
the Journal informed its readers, " were elected or rather se- 
lected, were most respectable and influential, and their names 
gave a power to the movement that it did not deserve from the 
numbers whom they represented." It will be readily seen that 
the men composing the State Committee w^ere also of such 
character that neither Mr. Davis nor Mr. Anthony could use 
them for unworthy ends. Yes, they were men whom you could 
not with all your perverse ingenuity hoodwink or mystify. 



11 



Several of them had been delegates to the National convention 
which organized the Republican Party, and their determined 
purpose was to continue its existence unbroken until the objects 
of its organization were accomplished. 

Senator Anthony could not make that committee subservi- 
ent to his purposes, and so he brands them as disorganizers, 
and pronounces them and the party they represented, as m- 
practicahle and unconciliatory •There was a steadfast integri- 
ty which insisted on the ascendency of the National party in 
the State, and would accept noCfiing less, and asked nothing 
more. They understood perfectly well, that no mere caucus of 
the Rhode Island Legislature, no political pranks of the Sena- 
torial editor, could dissolve or transfer their allegiance from a 
great National organization, extending itself into every part 
of the Union where freedom of speech could be maintained, 
and destined in 1860 to crown its beneficent mission in the 
election of a, Republican President. Their aims were far 
reaching and patriotic ; but he who should have stood as the 
head and front of the party and defended its organization from 
all assaults, became, for the time being, its most active, adroit, 
and unscrupulous enemy — a R'j publican Senator of the Unit- 
ed States, disorganizing the National Party, weakening the 
force and narrowing the scope of the vital principles on which 
it rested, assailing its truest friends, and embracing its unprin- 
cipled foes ! 

In the Providence Journal of Sept* 23d, 1859, you say of 
me : — 



" In 1859, having left the Democratic party, he was a candidate for the Amer- 
ican Rspubhcan nomination, and was supported by his friends in a severe strug- 
gle in the Convention, running through eighteen ballots. On the eighteenth, Chris- 
topher Robinson received the nomhiation. VVliat did Thomas Davis do ? With 
what frank submission did he yield to the decision of the Convention ? How 
did he illustrate his high ideas of Party allegiance ? He bolted, he seceded, 
he set up for himself, hoping, doubtless, to defeat the election on the first trial, 
and to receive the aid of his old friends, the Democrats, on the second. Every 
other candidate yielded ; he, alone, held his perHOiial claims superior to the suc- 
cess of the party." 

I was not by any act of my own a member of the Amer- 
ican nor the American Republican Party ; and for you to 
charge me with "bolting or seceding" from a party, whose 
principles and organization you very well knew I had persist- 
ently and uniformily opposed, is, on your part, simply a piece 
of insolent mendacity. My relation to the Republican Party 



12 

of the Nation could not be severed or essentially changed by 
your shameless dereliction. If my conduct is to be tried by a 
standard established by you, then you are the supreme author- 
ity in the State, and make wrong and right by the decisions 
of your own will. This is the doctrine of pure despotism, 
and w^ould leave you free, and bind every other man to follow 
you in your tortuous and slippery track. I repudiate your doc- 
trines and the assumptions gron'ing out of them. I was as old 
a member of the Republican Party as you were. A delegate 
to the National convention, twas present and aided in its or- 
ganization in June 1S5G. You separated from the Whig, and 
I came out from the Democratic Party ; and in view of the 
critical condition of the country we solemnly agreed, in the 
language of the Philadelphia platform, " thenceforth to disre- 
gard all past political differences and divisions, and invite the 
co-operation of the men of all parties however differing from 
us in other respects, in support of the principles herein declar- 
ed." You had no more right, undei' this compact, to enter and 
reorganize the Whig party, than I had to re-enter the ranks of 
the Democratic Party. This you did in spirit if not in name, 
and in open defiance of all the reason and intelligent con- 
science of the State. If I had attempted to serve my old 
democratic friends, by conferring on them places of power and 
emolument, meanly excluding every Republican of whig ante- 
cedents, you would not have failed to denounce my conduct, 
in your organ, as that of an unprincipled trickster ; and such 
indeed I should have been in the estimation of honorable 
men. 

Reverse this picture and see if you did not do precisely this 
thing by the men of democratic antecedents. You had the 
means, growing out of your position as a Senator in Congress, 
and especially as editor of the only organ of the party in Prov- 
idence, and it may be said in the State, whose politics you had 
controlled for more th;m a quarter of a century. The State 
small and compactly populated, the city of Providence contain- 
ing nearly one third of the whole population, and more than 
that proportion of the wealth, you succeeded, as no other man 
could have done, in consummating this treachery, and thus 
making a record of your political dishonesty historically memo- 
rable : for, as surely as the events of the past ten years are 
ever reviewed by the historian, he will not fail to find the evi- 
dence completely furnished by your own pen, and recorded in 



13 

the columns of your journal, that you, Senator Anthony, ex- 
ceptional to every other Republican Senator, in the year 
1859, at a period of great public peril, when patriotic men 
were every where throughout this broad land, laboring to en- 
large, strengthen and unite all the opponents of Slavery on 
the Platform of ihe Republican Party — had, in this State, en- 
tered into the closest alliance with a portion of the old Whig 
Party. Yes, that faction or fraction of the old Whig Party, 
Avhich, in 1856 cast sixteen hundred votes in the Slate against 
the Republicans, became, through your agency a controlling 
power in this little commonwealth ; and next to yourself, the 
leaders of this Fillmore Party became the most efficient political 
power in Rhode Island. Let me refer somewhat in detail to 
this part of the subject. I wish to show what a sacred regard 
you had for the compact entered into with the Republican Par- 
ty ! how honorably you carried out that part of the platform of 
the party, in which you engage to unite with all who will 
come, ' loUhou* regard lo past ■political differences or divisions.' 

I begin with the orator selected to present to the voters 
the antecedents of the Republican candidate for Congress. 
This orator was the eloquent and adroit, though not over scru- 
pulous gentleman who had been the leading campaign speak- 
er for the Fillmore party in 1856. 

I take from join Jour?ial of March 2Sth, 1859, an extract 
from the proceedings of the American Republican ratification 
meeting, which was called to order by Wm. R. Watson Esq. 
" The first speaker announced was the Hon. Charles C. Van 
Zandt, who on being introduced was received with great en- 
thusiasm, and spoke of the Republican Party and its candidate 
for Congress in the following strain ; — " 

" The strife was commenced by a few disaffected persons, who were dissatis- 
fied with the distribution of the State oflBccs, who wished to be the party lead- 
ers, and who, when they found it impossible to do this, said ' We will have a 
party of our own ;' and they have a part3\ The slave system was nest dis- 
cussed. The record of Mr. Davis was reviewed — how being of foreign birth, 
he had, during the greatest part of his life, been identified with the Democratic 
party ; — that party, said the speaker, which had always had a black stripe in its 
banner — how he voted for President Polk, for Gen. Cass, and for Fi-auklin Pierce 
— how he had been one of the earliest supporters of the insurrectionary move- 
ment in 1842 — how he was a member of the General Assembly ; in consequence 
of which, Philip Allen, a Democrat, was sent to Congress — how he had in every 
possible way, aided the extension of slavery by laboring with the Democratic 
party — how he ran for Democratic moderator in North Providence a year since. 
The Free Trade proclivities of Mr. Davis were rebuked, as were also'liis princi- 
ples of anti-protection to domestic industry." 



14 

This meeting was exclusively Whig. Of its one hundred 
Vice Presidents there was not among them a solit<)ry represen- 
tative of the Three Thousand electors who had come out from 
the Democratic Party in 1856. The Democratic element was 
entirely ignored. Yu2/.r name^ Republican Senator, flourishes 
in the list of Vice Presidents. And what a spectacle you pre- 
sent ! reversing the whole compact in its letter and spirit, 
and taking into closest political communion those who^were the 
morst active enemies of the Republican Party and its principles 
in the great campaign of 1856, and who so continued, and de- 
feated the Republicans in the State election in 1860 — and us- 
ing them to defame, assail and misrepresent the oldest and 
most faithful Republicans in the State, men whose shoe latch- 
ets, politically speaking, you were not worthy to unloose ! 

I will now show by further extracts from the Providence 
Journal, how the morale of the Party was broken down and the 
defeat of the Republicans accomplished. In the Journal of 
February 28th, 1859, you thus introduce the American 
Republican Candidate for Congress : — 

" Mr. Robinson is a Whig of the school of Henry Clay, and such a man does 
not have to abandon any of his old principles or to adopt any new ones in ac- 
cepting an American Republican nomination. Now he stands before us the reg' 
ular nominee of the party opposed to the present policy of the National Admin- 
istration, to the extension of Slavery, and in favor of protection to American 
industry. This is a very good Whig platform." 

The extract which follows is from the address of the Amer- 
ican Republican State Central Committee, April 1, 1859, only 
five days before the election. 

" The excuse they (the Republicans) give for their attempt to divide the pres- 
ent State administration is. that their movement is necessary to meet some an- 
ticipated national organization, that may or may not be had fn the Presidential 
election of 1860. . Wliat warrant have they that the opposition to the National 
Democratic Party in 18G0 will assume that particular name ?" 

Thus it will be seen that the Republican Party is repudiated 
both as an existing fact or a future hope. I do not affirm. Sen- 
ator, that you wrote the address of the American Republican 
Party. I think it is not in your style : perhaps you can say 
who its author was, and what part he acted in the Campaign 
of 1856. 

Now read the denunciations of the Republican Party by 
its own recently elected Senator. I quote from the Journal of 
April 1st, 1859. " The Strait Republicans must take the re- 



15 

sponsibility of the division in the ranks of the opposition. The 
Amorican Republican was the existing organization, and it has 
been sanctioned by the popular vote." Here we have the old 
fable of the wolf and lamb repeated. "It was the Strait 
Republicans that disturbed the harmony of our politics by 
breaking from the regular and prevailing organization !" How 
audaciously these charges are made against men who were 
simply maintaining their well considered and honest relations 
to the Republican Party of the Nation. 

I proceed to make another class of extracts which were ex- 
pressly designed to turn and fasten the odium of the " divis- 
ion" upon the Candidate of the Republican Party for Congress, 
or more distinctively, on myself, personally. 

In the Journal of April 2d, 1859, you have the following 
paragraph : 

" Mr. Robinson was nominated by a Convention foirly elected, and with the 
view to the selection of the candidate that should best unite the party and ad- 
vance its principles. Mr. Davis is the candidate of a Convention, nominally Re- 
pubhcan. but really a Davis Convention. To content the exclusive friends of 
Mr. Davis, the cail should have been addressed to all opposed to the policy of 
the administration and the extension of Slavery, and in favor of the nomination 
of Thomas Davis." 

There was on the first trial no election in the Eastern dis- 
trict, and the Candidate of the Republicans published an ad- 
dress to the electors, giving reasons for continuing the contest. 
This elicited a fresh outbreak against the nominee of the Re- 
publican Party for again daring to defy the authority of the 
Editorial Senator. On June 12th, 1859, the day after the ad- 
dress was issued, your organ declared that 

" The persistence of Mr. Davis' friends in bringing him forward again under 
existing circumstances is extraordinary. The strait Republicans had a nominal 
organization, but did not bring out separate candidates. Their committee ask- 
ed for a conference with the American Republican. The latter proposed to 
call a convention of all the opponents of the National Administration. The 
Strait Republicans declined this." , 

In the Journal of June 14tb, 1859, you say : — 

" Mr. Davis speaks of unprincipled and menda-'^ious party leaders. We do 
not know whom he means ; but we know such language illy becomes the man 
who has been treated with so great courtesy by the party he has divided and 
distracted in his persistent determination to riui against the wishes of the ma- 
jority. If Mr. Davis will not let his personal advancement stand in the way of 
the settlement of this unfortunate controversy let hini withdraw nis name." 

June ITth, you say of the Republican Convention-" It was 



IG 

a very respectable Convention but ifc was undoubtedly held in 
ihe interest of one man." 

You represent me as governed by no other or higher motives 
than my own personal advancement, and at a period when the 
Providence Journal had the power to make the people believe 
it. The false position of the Senator required the case to be 
"worked up," else it might be made apparent to the majority 
as it already was to the well informed minority of the electors, 
that Anthony and not Davis was the " bolter and seceder" 
who had complicated the politics of the State, and who called 
good evil and evil good, to show his great power by demon- 
strating that whichever way he chose to cast his Senatorial and 
editorial influence, there the majority could be counted upon. 

On the 21st of June, 1859, the day before the special elec- 
tion for member of Congress you issued the following remark- 
able manifesto : 

" The nomination of Mr. Robinson is perfectly fair and honorable, as he rep- 
resents the party that has been -from the first in favor of conciliation and union ; 
as he stands on tlie only platform that is broad enough to hold all the opponents 
of the extension of Slavery." 

You affirm that the Convention which assembled at Phila- 
delphia in June 1856 did not succeed in framing a platform 
broad enough to hold all who were opposed to the extension of 
Slavery, 'it required the transcendent genius of the editor of 
the Providence Journal — the newly elected Republican Sena- 
tor, to look over the whole field of politics and fully compre- 
hend the necessities of the times. There were some things to 
be done that never entered into their political philosophy ! al- 
though their object was to consolidate the Republican Party of 
the nation, to meet the great issue pending before the country. 
The object of the Rhode Island Senator was to perpetuate his 
own power and influence, and as a means necessary to this end, 
to keep about him all the old political Whig hacks in the State; 
to stir up by the use of his organ, the Providence Journal, ev- 
ery obsolete and latent prejudice — to ignore every generous 
and brave sentiment — to insist on keeping the issue of the tar- 
iff prominent — to protect from fanatical speeches the reputa- 
tions of Clay and Webster — to gloze over the Dred Scott de- 
cision, raid to swear, Falstalf like, that the candidate of the 
Republican Party was a " bolter and seceder," because he 
persisted in maintaining that his political allegiance was due 



• 17 

to the National Organization and not to the " Head Centre" 
located on Washington Row, Providence, Rhode Ishind. 

Daring tlio canvass, Mr. Garrison was an object for your fre- 
quent and malevolent thrusts. On one occasion, I had refer- 
red to him at a meeting in Rail Road Hall in reply to your 
" Whig Candidate of the Henry Clay school," who took that 
opjDortunity to pronounce a eulogy on the great compromiser. 

In an unpremeditated and spontaneous remark, I expressed 
the opinion that the f;ime of Mr Garrison would survive that of 
Clay or Webster.* In coinmenting on this you say, " seldom 
has a political weapon of so great strength been employed to 
so little damage to the man who put it into the hands of his 
opponents." In the first part of the above sentence there is a 
large amount of truth. The weapon vms formidable ; and you 
did not fail to use it with all the force which it was capable of 
exerting. -You took measure of the matter, and said just 
enough and at the right time to produce the most effect. Short- 
ly before the special election in June, you speak thus of the 
great emancipator : 

" If Mr. Garrison is not one of the most dangerous mon in the land it is only 
because the extreme character of his views and the violence of his mode of ex- 
pressing them, prevent him from having many followers." 

It would be difficult to condense more detraction into the 
same space than you have succeeded in doing in the above 
sentence. 

In your declaration, which I have already quoted, that I 
" was supported in a severe straggle in the American Repub- 
lican Convention, running throagli eighteen ballots," your evi- 
dent purpose is to identify me with that party where I was not, 
and could not be a candidate. W^hen the Convention met, it 
was well settled that my running as the candidate of the Re- 
publicans, whose nomination I had already accepted, would iii 
no degree be changed by any nomination the American Repub- 
lican party might make. You had done your utmost to mix 
up and complicate the politics of the State ; but there were a 
few Republicans in the convention, never exceeding seven, 
who cast their ballots for me ; and on this fact you base your 
assertion that I was a condidate in the ordinary sense, before 



♦ urissrichusetts has recently voted to place a statue of Mr. Garrison ia the National capital, side by 
side with those of Gov. Wiuthrop and Jnhn Adims, to represent the third historic pKiiod of that uobie 
Commonwealth. What wa» prophecy in "59 has become history ia '66. 
3 



18 . 

that Convention. Now the truth is, the whole of that long 
contest was the result of your arrof>;ant attempt to force on the 
American Republican Party Mr. Sheffield, your exclusive fa- 
vorite. For weeks if not for months, before the meeting of any 
Convention, the whole clistiict knew whom the editor of the 
Journal and newly elected Senator preferred for representative 
to Cono-ress from the Eastern District — not because of his emi- 
nent qualifications — (let me not be understood as disparaf::;ing 
Mr. Sheffield's qualifications) no, .such was not the reason of.the 
selection, but personal devotion to your interest established 
liim in your favor. He had exercised a controlling influence 
in the election of yourself as Senator of the United States. — 
But there was very little chance of his receiving a nomination 
from the Republican Party. You also had good reasons for 
supposing, judging by the past, that Mr. Davis stood well 
with the Republican Party of the State, as they had tendered 
to him the nomination for Congress in 1857, which, from con- 
siderations wholly of a private nature, was at that time declined, 
and there was no reason to suppose that it might not again oc- 
cur. This would throw Mr. biheffield out and drfoat your par- 
tial preference, so that your scheme to give him the nomina- 
tions made this division and disorganization a necessity; and 
you now audaciously charge me with the commission of an act 
done for a purpose, deliberately by yourself; shewing in its 
origin and progress, an utter contempt for the claims of any 
other candidate than your favorite, and ending for once, in 
your discomfiture in the Convention. You announce on the 
28th of February, 1859, that 

" A position of neutrality is not becoming," and that " we have no hesitation 
in saying that we regard the American Republican Organization as the authoriz- 
ed and regular expression of the opposition." 

If at this time you had elected to support the Republican 
Party, we should have continued members of the same organi- 
zation, and I should have escaped all your false, bitter and un- 
merited denunciations. 

" Few are the steps from dereliction to persecution." 

Yet the plainest principles of fidelity to the Republican Par- 
ty required you to give its candidate a cordial and hearty sup- 
port. You had at that time, as representatives of the Whig 
element of the Republican Party, both Senators in Congress, 



]9 

(Mr. SimnioiiS and yourself,) and the Western District was 
represented by Mr. Brayton, also from the same party, while 
tho poor boon of one representative was denied to the Demo- 
cratic elemen' of the Party, after the brave fight and grand 
victory of 185G. 

I can only think of your conduct in this matter, as the very 
essence of political meanesss. If such a policy had prevailed 
throughout the country, the success of the Republican Party 
"would have been impossible in 1860. Contrast this with the 
policy of Mr. Lincoln in the construction of his cabinet. To 
avoid all cause of complaint, it was divided equally between 
the representatives of the two old parties. In his estimation 
it was no disqualification that a man had been a member of 
the Democraiic Party. 

In your strictures upon an article which appeared in the 
New York Journal of Commerce, there is so much in confirma- 
tion of my charges against you, that 1 copy nearly tho whole, 
notwithstanding its lens-th. You sav :-=- 

"The Journal of Commerce copies from this paper with some commendation 
an article in which we dispute the monstrous docirine that t le Supreme Court 
may not rightfully interpret the constitution in respect to the power of Congress, 
and defends the llapublic-m Party proper from the responsibility of such radi- 
cal and destructive hercsj\ The Journal q/ Commerce calls this " the ultra Re- 
publican doctrine of the day." It is true tliat this doctrine was announced by 
the Convention ivhich spill off from the regular and prevailing organization i:i 
this Slate; but it is but justice to say, that it is not avowed or defended, but 
rather palliated on the ground that the resolution was accidentally, thoughtlessly 
passed, and that it is to be taken in connection with other vesolutions ib'at essen- 
tially modify it. Although we did not hesitate, in the beghming, to denounce 
this doctrine, and although wc cannot find in the subsequent resolutions the 
qualitying clauses that we claimed for them, we have cheerfully given place to 
the e-planations offered in excuse for the hrst one. 

" And now wo- ask tiie Journal of Commerce, which is so fond of dwelling 
upon the ultra radicalism of the Republican Party and upon the high conserva- 
tism uf the Democratic, to note that while the oldest Republican paper in tho 
State, u terly and emphatically denies t.iis doctrine, the organ of the Demociatic 
Party, while also denyhig it in National afiiiirs, holds it in State affairs ; claims 
that our Supreme Court, which derives its powers from the same words that arc 
employed in the Federal Constitution to confer the same power on the Supremo 
Court of the United States, does not haye the power to interpret the Constitu* 
tion in respect to the powers of the General Assembly, but that the General As-, 
sembl}' has the right to revoke the decrees of the court, to set aside its decisions 
and practically to instruct it in the manner in which it shall decide the eases be- 
tween individcals. 

" Nor is this all ; in the Eastern Congressional District, the opposition have 
two candidates. One of them was an old Whig, who remained with that party 
as long as it was a party, and then joined the Republicans. The other was a 
Daraocrat in his political organization, yet an abolitionist in his sentiments, never 
concealed but op'"xily declared on all proper occasions. Since his nomination he 
has made the if markable declaration, that William Lloyd (iarrison will be re- 
membered and honored when Henry Clay and Daniel Webster are forgotten. 



20 

Of the two men we support tlie former ; the organ of the Democratic Party is 
not able to conceal its sympathy with the latter, and no one who reads its col- 
umns can doubt that it would prefer the election of Mr. Davis ove» Mr. Robin- 
son. 

" There is another question that agit:\tes our community and that threatens the 
most serious consequences to a great department of our government. 

" We have an admirable system of public instruction, admirable even among 
the schools of New England. The schools for the white and the colored child- 
ren are separate, and no doubt is entertained by those who have the charge of 
them and those who contribute most to their support, that they ought to bo 
kept separate, that the introduction of the negro children into the schools now 
confined to the whites, would lead to evil conse*quences to both. This is the 
judgment of the city government, of the school committee, of the superintend- 
ent of the schools, and of the teachers in the schools of both kinds. An agita- 
tion has i-een commenced and carried on with great effect and pertinacity to 
abolish the colored schools and send the children to tlie white schools, all to mix 
together. This radical scheme has been steadily opposed in this paper, and has 
found its chief support, not openly but indirectly and covertly, yet none the 
less effectively, in the organ of the Democratic Party, wdiich has xiot ceased to 
urge the destructive measure and to encourage the men who are thus trying to 
break down our system of public instruction." 

The above article is not the production of some obscure and 
mendicant "penny a liner," but proceeds from the brain of 
the editor of the " oldest Republican Journal in the State" — 
the oldest editor in the State — a graduate of Brown Universi- 
ty — an ex-Governor of Rhode Island — and, at the time it was 
written, a recently elected Senator of the United Stjite^. 

It appeared in the Providence Journal on the day preceding 
the election, April 4th, 1859, its specitd object being to defeat 
the Republican candidate for Congress from the Eastern Dis- 
trict. 

The Pro-Slavery Whig Journal of Commerce endorses the 
assault made by you on the Republican Platforms, National and 
State, and you write this labored and crafty article in commen- 
dation of your own Ireachery and in defence of the " Repub- 
lican Party proper" from the responsibility of such radical and 
destructive heresy. 

It was not your " Republican Party proper" that passed the 
following, June 17th, 1856 : — 

" Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over 
the Territories of the United States for their government ; and that in the exer- 
cise of this power it is both the right and imperative duty of Congress to pro- 
hibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy and Slavery." 

You ignored the Philadelphia Platform during the canvass 
of 1859. So did the Fillmore Party in thi* State to which 
you allied yourself. They professed nothing better — they had 
a right to do so ; you had not. The very day you decided to 



21 

assail the principles of the National Party, you should have 
resigned your place as a Kepublican Senator, and not disgraced 
your exalted position by using it for purposes so. detrimental to 
Freedom and Humanity. 

The issue before tlie country was, whether the Supreme 
Court of the United States, by virtue of its decision in the 
Dred Scott case, carried Shivery into all our National Territo- 
ry ? The Republican Platform claimed that the Constitution 
conferred on Congress sovereign power over the territories, and 
you denounce in unmeasured terms the Republican Party of 
the State for maintaining the doctrine thus enunciated in the 
National Platform, and for resisting a construction of the con- 
stitution, which, if admitted, left us no remedy but the dread 
arbitration of the sword, to save ourselves from this yawning 
gulf of judicial power. The reason and instinct of every 
right minded and morally sane man revolted against such an 
interpretation of the Federal Constitution. 

You stio-matize it as "the monstrous doctrine that the Su- 
preme Court niay not rightfully interpret the Constitution in 
respect to the power of Congress." You were at issue with 
every Republican Statesman in the country when you made 
this unqualified and sweeping declaration, nnd worse still, with 
the rights of human nature itself. The fact was, you had no 
real comprehension of the perils before us, no appreciation of 
the principles or issues involved therein ; and every thing con- 
nected with the politics of the State, was to be played out on 
the old plan of 'political clap trap. Your bones were dry, and 
there was nothing in them to enable you to predict a coming 
storm, and you naturally returned to wallow in the mire of old 
party politics. From the opening to the close of the campaign, 
only such arguments were brought forward as corrupted the 
man who used them, every one of which was an appeal to 
some narrow prejudice, sordid consideration, or co\vardly ap- 
prehension. 

Your article, to any one conversant with local matters and 
classes, is worth studying ; and when seen in all its bearings 
on the pending canvass, it must be admitted to be the produc- 
tion of a master in political ingenuity. It covers a great deal 
of ground, and I fancy it was one ot the best timed and ef- 
fective editorials of the campaign, appearing as it did the day 
before the election. 

It commences by dealing with great subjects and National 



22 

issues, and professes to vindicate the- " Republican Party prop- 
er" " froin the ultra doctrine of the day." But pro-Slavery 
is at best vile and valg;ar, and as a consequence the scnatori;d 
editor descends rapidly to the lowest method of treatment, and 
directly proceeds to violate again the Kepiiblican Platform, by 
reviving and " remembering all past political differences and 
divisions" to the fullest extent ; assails the Republican candi- 
date because he was once a '' Democrat" and is now an ab- 
olitionist ; denounces the Democratic Party for its virtuous 
advocacy of equal school rights without distinction of color, 
and also announces that " this radical scheme has been steadi- 
ly opposed in this paper" and has found its chief support in 
the organ of the Democratic Party. 

iiow base for you to stir up that deep and dreadful preju- 
dice against the' "negro children" as you call them in your 
pro-slavery classics, doing your utmost to keep alive that un- 
christian hatred, apparently for no higher purpose than the 
turning of votes against; the candidate of the Republican Par- 

Again : how very ingeniously you sandwich Mr. Garrison, 
and Mr. Davis, the Republican candidate for Congress, be- 
tween " Hazard and Ives" and the "Negro children !" Who 
but youself could be your parallel in this skilful arrangement? 
Your intent was to make me a party in the Hazard and Ives 
controversy, and thereby turn the timid, wealthy and conserv- 
ative foice of the district against me. The injustice of thus 
associating me with a controversy in which I had taken no 
part, expressed no opinion, and really had not at the time 
formed any on the special merits of the case at issue, is ap- 
parent. At the same time you were usirg Mr, Van Zandt, the 
legislative leader of the party in the house of Representatives, 
against the Supreme Courtof the State, giving him prominence, 
power and opportunity to disseminate his opinions, having him 
canvass the district, and assail me politically, in concert with 
the American Republican candidate, Mr. Robinson — par nobile 
fratrum. 

In your Journal of September 23d, 18G4, you assert that 
" Mr. Davis was chosen to Congress from the Eastern District 
by the Democratic Party in an election by far the most cor- 
rupt that the St?;ite had ever witnessed, never had money been 
so used before." I have four times run for Congress, twice 
as the candidate of the democratic party ; and in both of these 



23 

elections the amount expenrlecl by me was much less than when 
I r;in as the caudMate of the Republicans. It is well under- 
stood in Rhode Island that no one can be a candidate for an 
important oflice before the people, without a considerable sum 
is famished to be applied to the payment of Registry Taxes, 
which has now become a very serious expense ; and, if I am 
correctly informed, Mr. Jenckes, in his last election, when 
there was no contest whatever, paid for necessary expenses, a 
sum, in amount, equal to all expended by me in both elections, 
when I ran as the candidate of the Democratic Party, in 1853 
and 1855. In the contest of 1855, I was defeated by Mr, 
Durfee, who rode in on the topmost wave of " Americanism;" 
and neither money, character, services nor talent could then 
have made the result other than it was. 

All the money used by the Republicans, beyond the neces- 
sary expenses, in the contest of 1859, is chargeable directly 
and solely to your treachery. If you had not " bolted " and 
taken the Party Organ with you, there would have been no 
serious opposition to the Republican candidate. You are the 
last live man that ought to bring before the public for review 
the reconlcd events of that contest. In politics, a blunder is 
said to be Avorse than a crime ; and you have committed one 
in calling from their repose the transactions of that campaign. 

IS'o inconsiderable portion of the funds then expended were 
used to .sustain a press (the Providence Tribune) for th'e pur- 
pose of counteracting in its columns, the effects of the contin- 
uous misrepresentations and plausible perversions of facts, which 
unceasingly flowed from the columns of your Organ. All these 
were so cunningly phrased as to be most effective in steadily un- 
dermining the morals of the State, and thus preparing the way 
for the stupendous political debauch of 18C0, for which you are 
in no small degree answerable". ]3ut it was not always that 
which appeared in your paper, addressed to the better class of 
readers, which did this work ; you had besides, your corps of 
subterranean friends, ready, adroit and unscrupulous; and- 
whoever became an object for the point of their vat and course 
jokes, might consider hini-self fortunate if he escaped open 
ridicule and personal insult. 

If th'i Democratic leaders of those days used money in elec- 
tions, they preserved Iheir honorable relations o the party and 
its individual members ; the success of the candidate was by 
them held subordinate to the triumph of the party. There was 



24 

RO leader, however hot in the pursuit of office, that did not 
connect his own success with the consolidation of the organiza- 
tion. Neither the host nor the worst of them had attained to your 
eclectic disdain of party obligations or personal honor, so that 
thev did or could proceed, as has been done by you, to deliber- 
ately disorganize and distract the ranks of the party, by pack- 
ing primary meetings with outside barbarians, by dividing city 
and town committees, by sending to the State and other Con- 
ventions, double delegations, by assailing and slandering the 
State executive when of their own party, on the false assump- 
tion that he stood between them and their aspirations, and by 
removing faithful officers of the Federal Government because 
they resisted their destructive and ambitious schemes for per- 
sonal aggrandizement. John Adams remarks that " corrup- 
tion in elections is the great enemy of Freedom ;" and the of- 
fence of bribery is every wheie punishable by statutes rarely 
enforced. My indvidual opinion is, that the bribery so exten- 
sively and effectively practised in your recent Senatorial elec- 
tion, bad as il was^ was not, in its moral effects, so baneful as 
the general method by which that election was accomplished. 
The whole scheme was planned and executed with an unscru- 
pulous adroitness and audacity that find no parallel in the poli- 
tics of this State. The actors and the events furnish no mean 
materials for an interesting and instructive di'ama. 

Your record for a single year may be very edifying to polit- 
ical tricksters and turncoats. The example of a person in a po- 
sition of eminence always affords shelter and justification above 
and beyond that which an obscure and unofficial character could 
offer ; and it is therefore all the more valuable and important 
to have it preserved and placed where it may be of public 
service. 

On the 28th of Feb , 1859, you announce in the Provi- 
dence Journal your purpose to " l3olt " the Republican nomina- 
tion for Congress, and declare that " a position of neutrality is 
not becoming us, " and decide that the American Republican 
is the organization which you will support. On the 1st of 
April, 1859, (a proper day for such an address to appear in 
your oigan,) the State Central Committee of your pet party 
speak officially of the Republican Organization as a thing 
" that may or may not be had in the Presidential election of 
iSGO, " and it emphatically asks, " what warrant have they 
that the opposition to the National Democratic party in 1860 
will assume that name ? " 



25 

On the 2211(1 of Jane, 1859, you had progressed do^vnward 
if not onward. You audaciously declare that Mr. Robinson, 
the candidate of the party that issued the address, " stands on 
the only platform broad enough to hold all the opponents of 
slavery. " This was put forth the day before the special elec- 
tion for member of Congress. The defeat of the Republican 
candidate was effected, and you are found, as the time for the 
assembling of Congress draws near, assuming another charac- 
ter. You have accomplished all you desired by the present 
disorganization of the Republican Party ; and you therefore 
indicate to your American Republican Committee^ composed 
mostly of old Whigs, either agreeing with you in opinion, or 
having no opinions of their own and were ser\iceable to you in 
carrying out your scheme, that it is best to accede to the de- 
mand of the Republicans to adopt the Philadelphia Plat- 
form. And lo ! It is done ; and the two committees come 
together and unite in the call which follows. 

'•We take great pleasure in publisliin^ the call of a State convention as agreed 
upon by the American Rspublican and the Ripublican Statd Committee. The 
union thus happily elf 3ctei, will m33t with the general and cordial assent of 
those to whom the call was addressed, and we shall go into the next election 
and prepare for the great contest of 1830 with an undivided Jront." 

" The electors of Rhode Island without regard to past political differences, 
who are opposed to the present Federal Administration, and' in favor of the plat- 
form of principles adopted by the Pniladelphia ' Convention, June 17 th, 
1856/' &c. 

Signed 

BYRON DIMON, Cliairman Republican Committee, 
K. R. HAZARD Jr., Secretary 

SIMON H. GREENE, Cliairman American Eepuhlican Committee 
GEORGE MANCHESTER, Secretary, 

Previous to this union of the two parties, and as early as 
Feb. 8th, of the same year, a proposition to unite and adopt 
the Philadelphia platform was made by the Republican State 
Committee and rejected by the American Republican. Bat 
so soon as you gave the order for the two to coalesce, the thino- 
was done, and immediately comes the endorsement of the 
Senatorial euitor in his role as organizer of the Republican 
Party. 

We nexi liud you coming out in a new character and on a 
new stage — 'efender of the Republican Party against the very 
class of persons whom you had lifted to political consequence 



26 

in the State — yes, doing precisely the work for which you had 
assailed others in a long roll of infamous political articles. 

Washington, Feb. 22d, 1860. 

Dear Sik. — 

" A rumor has reached us that some hesitation was felt by 
the dele<?ation in Congress, in supporting the nominees of the Republican State 
Convention. Nothing could be more unfounded. 

It seems to us that the Republican Party has presented no crisis in which the 
importance of a cordial support of its nominees was more plainly demanded by 
a regard for its integrity and its highest interests. 

Hon. SAMUEL G. ARNOLD. 

JASfES F. SIMMONS, 
H. B. ANTHONY, 
Wm. D. BKAYTON, 
CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON." 

We have now all come together again — Mr. Anthony, Mr. 
Robinson and Mr. Davis — hail fellows and good Republicans 
•well met! Bat who of this Tpnrty siui/ched o^' in February, 
1859, and supported the candidate of a local parly, a party 
which, in March doubted whether such an oro^anization as the 
Republican would exist at all in 1800? Who, furthermore, 
declared on the 22d of June, 1859, that the National platform 
was not broad enough to hold all the /opponents of slavery. 
And in November, 1859, that the same platform was all suffi- 
cient for the great contest of 1860. 

The " runior" that some hesitation was felt about your sup- 
porting the Republican Party was quite c.irrent and perfectly 
natural ; and it has always been believed that you in your se- 
cret heart desired the defeat of the Republican party in the State 
election of 18G0 : at all events, you prepared the way and put 
into effective motion the machinery by which that defeat was 
accomplished. Nearly all the most active men of the Ameri- 
can Republican organization became partisans of Mr. ISprague, 
and joined in the general and disgraceful scramble. Old party 
ties were swept away. The candidate had no avowed political 
opinions, and probably did not possess any ; and the disorgan- 
ization and moral confusion inaugura^,ed by you had complete 
sway in the State election. The little Commonwealth was laid 
prostrate by the power of Mammon, " the least erected of the 
spirits that fell from heaven ;" and throughout the land re- 
sounded the shout of Conservatism and Democracy, that the 
Republican Party was defeated in Rhode Island. The defeat 
of the party and the means by which it was effected are thus 



27 

announced in your Organ of September 6, 1860, the day after 
the election : 

" The contest on Wednesday was one of the most spirited and excited that the 
State ever saw. The aggregate vote exceeded that cast in the last Presidential 
election by more thattlurty-fonr hundred. We are glad to know that nothwilh- 
standhig the intensity of the feeling manifested, the day passed off without any 
notewortliy trouble or disorder. We trust however tliat it may long remain 
conspicuous and unparalleled in the annals of our State in respect to its demor- 
alizing influence upon the public sentiment. Never was so much money spent 
at an election before, and never was it spent so boldly and openly for the pur- 
pose of purchasing votes." 

Here is another item in the long list of your gross perver- 
sions and misrepresentations. See Journal Sept. 29th, 1864. 

" Mr. Davis denios that he was .m outside candidate in 1859, and affirms that 
he belonged to the Republican and not to the American Republican party, and 
owed no allegiance to the latter which nominated Mr. Robinson. 

We are aware that Mr. Davis, apprehending that he would fail to obtain the 
regular nomination unless he strengthened himself by some extraneous influ- 
ence, got together a convention of his own. That convention, himself the chair- 
man of the committee that called it. " 

You cannot find'a person of character who will endorse your 
statement, that I was a member of the American Republican 
Party. When you affirm that I " got together a convention 
of my own," you make me out a man of extraordinary power 
and inQuence in the state. You might as well have gone a 
step further and charged me with getting up the Philadelphia 
Convention. You wonhl be quite as near the truth, for the one 
convention was the offspring cf the other. I had no organ of 
my own, no office, no ready pen to write paragraphs like the 
specimens I have given of yours, I had had no practice in the 
art of stabbing, slandering and misrepresenting those who 
were in my way politically. I had never reduced falsehood 
to a system, nor become so perfect in the art by a long 
practice of it on others, as, at last, to impose it on myself. I 
had neither the power nor the qualities to create a party, nor 
the desire to maintain or defend one, merely to subserve my 
own ends, regardless of political consequences to the State or 
country. I certainly was not the person who played that part 
in the canvass of 1850. 

The following resolutions were adopted by the Republican 
State Convention, February 16th, 1859. It is to this portion 
of the series of resolutions that you refer when you call on the 
Journal of Commerce to specially note, " that the oldest Re- 
publican paper in the State utterly and emphatically denies 



28 

their doctrine." They were drawn and presented to the con- 
vention, by the late William M. Chace, at that time the Rhode 
Island member of the National Republican Committee, com- 
posed of one from each state, Edwin D. Morgan being chair- 
man, and representing the Republicans in some twenty-five 
states of the Union. 

Resolved, 1st. That it is not within the legitimate province of the Supreme 
Court of the .United States to determine the powe/ of Congress imder tire Fed- 
eral Con^jtitulion. 

2nd. That in the recent Dred Scott decision, so called, the majority of the 
Judges of the Court have gone beyond the record, and pronounced extra judic- 
ial opinions concerning the relations of Slavery to the Constitution and the pow- 
ers of Congress over the Territories. 

3rd. That regarding these opinions as mere obiter dicta, we re-affirm the doc- 
trines upon these quosfioiis, promulgated by the National Republican Convention 
which met at Philadelphia June 1856. 

4th. That there are but two vital parties in the country— tlie Democratic 
Slavery orgxnizition, with its Cincinnati platform anl Dred Scoti decision ; and 
t'i3 Rjp'a'jlicxi I'arty^ with its Philaielphia platform audits Constitutional 
priucioles, as illustratai by the ordininoa of 17S7 — -larties which exist, not as . 
the offipring of a3 3i lent or temporary policy, but as the necsssary representa- 
tives of antagonistic ideas. " 

• 

The campaign was conducted on the part of the Republi- 
cans with great vigor and activity. Several persons of note 
from other States were invited, and engaged in the canvass. 
Joshua R. Giddings, Galusha A. Grow, Anson Burlingame, 
Don Piatt and others, all spoke ably and earnestiy in favor of 
sustaining the National organization. But the Senatorial Edi- 
tor with his Organ and his subterraneans earned the day. 
He represented or misrepresented the issues, so aj to put down 
effectually the " bolters and seceders," and " the regular and 
prevailing organization " was triumphant in Washington 
Row, 

The contest did not fail to attract the notice of leading Re- 
publican papers in other States. The New York Evening 
Post, the Worcester Spy, and the National Era, all decidedly 
censured the policy of the disorganizers. The reply of the 
Senatorial Editor to the strictures of the National Era, edited 
by the late Doct. Bailey, one of the noblest and truest of men, 
is so characteristic that I give it a place here. 

" The National Era thinks that it understands Rhode Island politics better 
than we do. Perhaps it does ; but it is our weakness to think that this is one 
of the things that we know more about than the accomplished Editor of that 
paper. " Journal, April 5th, 1859. 

You were right. Senator. You had made the politics of the 



29 

State jast what they were ; and when yoa attempt to palliate 
your apostacy as you frequently do, by saying that " the peo- 
ple endorse your course by their votes, " your position barred 
you from such a plea. You held a place in the State of such 
eminent power and authority, that as you decided so went the 
majority, carried by force of the influence wielded by you in 
your dual capacity of Journalist and Senator. When that Or- 
gan of yours disorganized, the little Commonwealth felt it to 
its very centre ; and, conscious of your power, you dared at a 
critical time to strike down the Republican organization ; and 
in justification you present the demoralized majority you had 
seduced and misled by your shameful treachery, — thus using 
the powers conferred on you for the preservation of the party, 
to effect its destruction. 

The extracts which follow will show to what pitiful shifts 
and expedients the Senator was driven in order to sustain him- 
self against the well directed arguments put forth by the Re- 
publicans in favor of the National Party. The specimens I 
give are a fair sample of a long series which might be much 
extended. The first extract is from the Journal of February 
27th, 1859 :— 

" It is objected that the name American Republican is local and that the Par- 
ty in Rhode Island should correspond with the National organization, otherwise 
the delegates to the next National Convention might not be admitted. The name 
is not peculiar to this State. It is the name in Massachusetts, and our friends 
are pretty good Republicans there. In Pennsjjdvania the opposition is called the 
Union Party. In New Jersey thte opposition is called the Peoples' Party." 

The next is from the Journal of March ISth, 1859 : — 

" There seems to be no just cause of complaint, and we could see no sound 
ness in the argument that it was necessary to nationalize the party bo as to make 
it conform with the general oa'ganization throughout the comitry and to secure a 
representation for the State in the next Presidential Convention. We have never 
doubted that the delegates would be welcomed into the National Convention 
whether they called themselves American Jtepublicans, as in Massachusetts, the 
Peoples' Party, as in New Jersey, or the Union Party, as in Pennsylvania." 

Again, on April 1st, 1859, we have from your pen another 
repetition of the statement that our noble sister Massachusetts, 
has no Republican Party : — 

" The name of the party in Rhode Ldand ig the same that it is in Massachu- 
setts. Does any body believe that the delegates from Massachusetts will be re- 
fused admission to the next National Convention because the party in that State 
is called American Republican ?" 

Once more. In your Organ, June 9th, 1859, you make 
the extraordinary assertion : — 



30 

" The only dispute has been abont a name and it is of no sort of public sig- 
nificanco. The majority is asked to surrender the name under which the party 
united in 185G and has acted ever since." . ^ 

I pronounce the above assertion unqualifiedly false. The 
union of the opposition to the Federal administration in 1856, 
^Yas effected by adopting the Republican name and Platform. 
I spoke in nearly every town in the S<-ate, and in some of them 
several times, heard all the campaign speakers during the whole 
period of that earnest struggle, and not a man of them from 
first to last called the Party by any other nan^e than Republi- 
can. 

Ah, Senator ! had the Republican Party been victorious in 
1856, the Providence Journal would have defended it valiant- 
ly, demanding all the spoils as exclusively its own. Your vis- 
ion would not then have descried an American Republican 
Party, superseding, by its comprehensive Platform, the one 
adopted by the Philadelphia Convention of 1856. The cohe- 
sive power of public plunder would have held you acd your 
Organ fast in the Party traces. 

" Thou little valiant, great in villainy! 
Thou ever strong upon the stronger side ! 
Thou fortune's champion, tliat dost never fight 
But when her humorous ladyship is by 
To teach thee safety." 

Every one who reads these extracts and considers the source 
from which they emanated, will not -wonder that the Republi- 
can Party in Rhode Island was beaten in 1860 in the State 
election, and in 1861 in both State and Congressional elec- 
tions, one Democrat and one Conservative being sent to Con- 
gress. Mr. Robinson, the American Republican candidate in 
1859, was defeated by Mr. Sheffield, the special friend of the 
Senatorial disorganizer- 

You are now and have been since 1859 a member of the 
United States Senate, associated, and doubtless on friendly 
terms with Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson. During my 
short career in Congress, I made their acquaintance. I enter- 
tain a very high respect, and no small degree of admiration 
for both gentlemen. I wish to ask them, through you, if, at 
the time to which your above quoted paragraphs refer, there 
was not in Massachusetts, a powerful and well organized Na- 
tional Republican Party. But that is not all, I wish you to 
inquire further, if at that time they used their talents and of- 



31 

ficiiil influence in the State of Massachusetts, to keep alive a 
local organization, with Gov. Gardner and men of like charac- 
ter and'opinions for leaders, callino^ itself American Republi- 
can. Perhaps these distinguished Senators might resent your 
query as an insult to their sense of honor. My own opinion 
is, that either of them would have parted with his own right 
hand rather than have used it for such a purpose. 

You make large claims to reputation as an Editor ; but that 
reputation will perish before your body is consigned to its last 
rest, if you continue to make no better use of your talents than 
to place on record statements so utt>."rly false and untenable. 
For your conduct in 1859 you deserved political outlawry ; 
but the sovereign power cannot be called to an account ! — 
" the King can do no wrong ! " and so you escaped your 
just deserts. 

Having now finished this outline of a portion of your politi- 
cal history, I present the sketch for your contemplation. I 
have endeavored to represent you as you really have appeared 
to me, appealing mainly to your own political record to verify 
the correctness of the portrait I have drawn of you. 

Slowly but surely, even handed justice is ever vindicating 
its supremacy in human affairs ; and all offenders against its 
inflexible rale must, in due time, be brought to judgment. 
Strive as you may, you cannot escape the merited condemna- 
tion by charging on others the offences of which you yourself 
have been prominently guilty. 

Very respectfully your fellow citizen, 

THOMAS . DAVIS. 

North Providence, March 26th, ISGG. 



Erratum. — On paj^e 14, the sentence — "' Tliis is a very good Whig Platform" 
-is not part of the quotalion, but a comment. 



APPENDIX. 



For the purpose of showing who it is that has " a temper 
not oversweet by nature," I place in juxta-posilion, extracts 
from the remarks made by me in the Electoral Convention, 
and the opening comments thereon of the Senatorial Editor, in 
his organ of Sept. 23, 18'.i4. 

I will leave every intelligent and candid reader to draw his 
own inferences, simply remarking, that the charges made by 
me were solid, true and substantial, and they deserved to be 
answered in some other manner than to turn " and berate 
me like an angry scold." "It seems, however, to suit his 
tastes, and he is the judge of his own conduct." 



Mr. Davis took the floor ngain and spolce 
in opposition to Gov. Dyer's views as fol- 
lows : 

''I confess that I do not sympathize to 
the fullest extent with the last speaker. I 
have something in me, right or wrong, which 
likes to see things settled properly and on a 
basis of principle, and I am not to be turned 
aside by the gentleman's desire for harmony 
and peace, unless it be a peace that can be 
made through a just course of conduct. I 
have felt, gentlemen, and I feel it now, that 
I would just as soon compromise the ques- 
tion of secession with Jefferson Davis, as 
compromise wiih the men who seceded in 
the city of Providence, and organized, I 
think for the same reason, when they saw 
that the power was passing out of their 
hands legitimately by the action of the peo- 
ple. They determined to rule or ruin, as the 
case may be. 1 do not tliink to ruin ; but I 
say to rule, and they took this extraordinary 
■means to re-organize the city of Providence. 
Then, sir, I agree that they obtained a ma- 
jority of their fellow citizens ; but how waa 
that majority secured ? It was obtained by 
the grossest bribery, and I make the charge 
here, believing itto betrue. Atnearlj' every 
poll in the central part of the city men went 
liccretly to obtain a consideration for their 
votes. That was the way the Senator from 
Providence was elected, and I say it, believ- 
ing it to be true, by disorganization and 
bribery ; and I am not willing, fellow citi- 
zens, to wave the discussion of this question. 
I do a>k, fairly and honorably, for the set- 
tlement of this question on its merits. T do 
not care, personally, more than any other 
man. But I have looked on this thing until 



SENATOR AXTIIONYS COMMENTS. 

" To say that Mr. Davis made an extraor- 
dinary exhibidon, iu the electoral conven- 
tion, would not be strictly true. Doubtless, 
it would have been an extraordinary exhi- 
bition in almost anybody else, but with due 
allowance for the effect of disappointed am- 
bition and of recent defeat upon a temper 
not over sweet by nature, we cease to feel 
much surprise that he should bring his petty 
personal griefs to the notice of the conven- 
tion, and detain the assembled representa- 
tives of the party with a recital of the rea- 
sons why the people of Noith Providence 
would not send him to the General Assem- 
bly. 

Yet it was melancholy to see a man of Mr. 
Davis's talents and position berating, like an 
angry scold, all who differed from him, and 
dilating upon his own purity and patriotism, 
and the corruption of everybody else. It 
was melancholy to see such a man repeating 
stale and refuted slanders, and charging bad 
motives upon those who were associated 
with him in the same cause. It seemed, 
however, to suit his tastes, and he is the 
judge of his own conduct. Mr. Davis's first 
assault was upon the Providence Jouexal, 
which, with great indignation, he declared 
had been so conducted as to command the 
public confidence, and had gained a large 
influence in the State. Mr. Davis has so 
carefully avoided this offence, in his own 
public career, and is so free l^rom any sus- 
picion of the kind, that it is hardly generous 
in him to reproach less fortunate people 
with consequences that can never fall upon 
him from similar causes. Passing from tlie 
paper to individuals, he assailed both the 



33 



tny indignation has required me to ppcak. 
Gentlemen, 1 am uot willing to sit down as a 
member of this parly, or any part^ , in which 
a single man, whoever he may be, claims all 
the rights ot office, and when he cannot have 
it by lair means, his friends take foul means 
to accomplish ihat end. I call upon the 
gentlemen of this committee to investigate 
this :niitter. Let me tell you, gentlemen, 
the great power in this State is lodged in 
the city of Provide; ce. 1 freely s-peak it, 
and frankly, because 1 am not a man to cover 
such matters, l.cre was the only paper of 
any force in our party in the State, and when 
you connect with that fact another, that its 
editor is a Senator in Congress, si.d the 
owner of the paper, which jiaper is substan- 
tially his organ rather than the organ of the 
party, you will see that when it is necessary 
to tlirow other men out, and to disorganize 
the p:a-ty, to accomplish his election to the 
high place he occupies, it is done. 

Gentlemen, 1 liave no wish to enter into a 
personal contest with any man. I sairl, on a 
previous occasion, this simply: 'That it 
was a dishonor to the State when only one 
man could be found to fill the place of Sen- 
ator.' I say so now. 

' Now in the name of all the gods at once. 

Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed. 

That he has grown so great ?' 

A man who has a million of dollars is 
measured by his ability to contribute five 
thousand or ten thousand to carry an elec. 
tion. We have a condition of things that 
exists in no other free State. No other State 
has been so corrupted by the influence of 
money ; and because this is so, I have some- 
times" wished that we might be annexed to 
Massachusetts, so that we could have a po- 
litical community where the power would 
not be concentrated in half a dozen men." 

It is time that the people of this State 
looked at this thing fairly. Providence is 
very powerful, and it is so, really, through 
that single organ directing ncaTly all the 
politics of the State, and it is not doing it by 
fair means. I would insist, if I had the right 
to insist, that the men who represent this 
State should not be the owners of the party 
organ. I think if I occupied such a position, 
that it would be no more than honorable to 
put myself out of one place or the other, 
and not combine too much jiowerin our little 
State. If you wish to be ruled by tliat, well 
and good. I only make my ]n-otest against it. 
I will not be ruled by it. 1 heard a personal 
friend of Senator Anthony say that as I had 
belonged to the Democratic party ten years 
ago, I had no claim to the favor of this party. 
That is the language uttered by the Senator's 
personal friends. In that spirit the party 
has been carried on, and it is the cause of a 
good deal of the results so visible in the con- 
stant disputes and disorganizations wc have 
witnessed heie. 



Fenators from this Slate, chnrgirg them uifh 
cross political coiriiption, then one ol the 
llcprcscntativcs. Indeed he hardly named 
a man but to malign him, and the only per- 
sons of whom he spoke with positive piaise 
were Gov. Smith ai d Thomas \\ . Dorr. 

Weary of single attacks, he passed to a 
who'e community, and denounced the Sec- 
ond Ward in this city in a 7jody. Its first 
oft'encewas that it was rich ; but on reflec- 
tion he admitted that wealth was not neces- ■ 
sarily a ciimc unless as in the case in ques- 
tion, it was connected with cultivation and 
intelligence, and even then, with the liberal- 
ity that characterized his whole speech, he 
admitted that people had a legal light to ba 
both rich and cultivated, although he strong- 
ly intimated that, in such case, their influ- 
ence should be carefully guarded against, 
and they should be held as of evil example, 
and unworthy of the confidence of their fel- 
low citizens. But the Second Ward was not 
enough for the insatiate Davis, and he 
pounced upon the whole city, the Union 
electors of which, after twice defeating his 
friends and the Democrats together, had cul- 
minated their outrage by electing to the 
convention delegates that were unaccepta- 
ble to the caucus in North Providence. — 
Next his wrathlul appetite, growing by what 
it fed on, would take nothing less ths-nthe 
whole State. He seemed like the Doman 
tvrant, who wished that all the people had 
laut a single neck, that ho might strike it off 
at one blow. He then denounced the great 
body of his fellow citizens, as the very weak 
instruments of a few very bad men, mere 
' white trash' — we quote the exact words 
which Mr. Davis thinks proper to apply to 
the people of Rhode Island — and said that 
he wished the St.tte was annexed to Massa- 
chusetts. It wa« Miss Squeers, the amiable 
and accomplished daughter of the immortal 
proprietor of Dotheboy's Hall, who in a mo- 
ment of uncommon vexation, exclaimed, 
'Mamma, I hate everybody.' Mr. Davis has 
been reading Dickens. His speech is not 
original. It is a borrowed idea, elaborated. 
We could not think of making so important, 
a territorial change, even to accommodate 
the amiable gentleman from North Provi- 
dence ; but sharing in what we know must 
be the general disposition to oblige him, in 
this respect, we will suggest a mode in which, 
possibly, he may effect his purpose, without 
so great inconvenience to other people. If 
he should feci disposed to annex himself to 
]ilassachusetts, he may feel sure that he will 
find no barrier at the trontier to arrest his 
exodus, and he may rest in his new home, 
secure that no expedition from this side of 
the line will ever be sent over to kidnap the 
vagrant treasure, and bring it back to a soil 
that we know is not worthy of him ; for he 
belongs to that class of our citizens happily 
described by Benjamin Hazard, as ' men who 
came among us'uninvited, and upon whoso 
departure there is no restraint.' " 



IIP 

•y■l^3 787 585 8 # 



